Fixed Friday: Duncan Crew USA Chillin’

Greetings, Fixed Axle Fanatics! Welcome to another glorious friday, and another clip from your friends at Yoyonews. As an extra special treat, this week those friends are more than just me! We’ve got some of Duncan Crew USA’s finest throwing down fixed axle knowledge—let’s take a peek, shall we?

First up to the plate, we’ve got Isaac Sams bringing his own unique twist to Nate Sutter’s “Pocketwatch” trick (which you can see in both the FACoatW finals and his alternative freestyle). This unique move captured the attention of plenty of top players at Worlds ’13 with its counterintuitive (yet brilliant!) method of stopping the yo-yo halfway down the string. This is normally considered a snag, but when used intentionally (as Isaac does here for a shortened somersault before entering 2or0) it can really mix up your tricks. What makes pocketwatch even better is how simple it is to learn: catch the yo-yo in your non-throwhand as it’s responding, give it a good hard yank, and then let that baby twirl.

I bump the tech level up for the next combo, which utilizes dump trucks to maneuver between more technical mounts. It opens with one of my favorite chopsticks stalls—I don’t know if it really has a name, as it’s just landing between the non-throwhand thumb/finger after a double or nothing, but I call it “ice cream cone”. I call a lot of tricks that, I guess. The trickiest part of this trick is swinging the yo-yo forward into a chopsticks dump truck, which puts a kink in the string. We get rid of the kink with another dump truck through the bucket before entering a reverse bucket with yet another dump truck. So many trucks!!

World Champion Hank Freeman brings us back to reality and shows that you don’t need string hits for tough tricks with his newest signature move, “The Turbo Rotary Hankinator.” (I name most of Hank’s tricks, btw.) If you wanna try this, just start with a shoot the moon down under, but when you get to the punches turn 180 degrees each rep. You’ll never stop punching! Just like Hank.

Takeshi has something very special this week, showing once again why he’s one of the best modders in the world with a fixed axle Exit 8. He powers through one of his signature 1A combos, a decidedly new school twist on the fixie formula, and proves that wood & metal yo-yos can live in harmony.

Isaac shows us more unconventional uses of the pocketwatch with a trick that could be considered even stall-ier than normal stalls, a pocketwatch to thumb mount. This trick is great because it’s simple, immediately understandable… but still challenging and entertaining. Dig the pacing.

The next trick that I show in the video is actually an ingenious technique for kickflip suicides pioneered by five time national offstring champ, Bryan Figueroa. Before you throw the suicide, if you wrap a bind of string around the axle, the loop will hang on through anything—clearly demonstrated by my even-sloppier-than-usual knee bonk suicide catch. You do have to keep an eye out for the yo-yo twisting around after the wrap, but if you’re the kind of player who likes risky tricks with big rewards and you want to take your kickflips to the next level, it’s definitely worth learning.

Hank takes it back to 2A town with possibly one of the first tricks ever to include both a loop wrap and a green triangle. The loop wrap (using your non-throwhand wrist to control loops) is an invaluable regen tool, but Hank kicks it up a notch by using the wrist twist to create a triangle and catch the yo-yo in a stall. Daaang! Bust this one out on all your friends for butterfly horse, they’ll be salty.

My last trick in the video is another dumptruck-heavy tech trick, titled “Peanut Butter Loves Honey.” This one opens with a wristmount stall, turns it upside-down, and after remounting into a fake bucket goes into some hyperspeed knee bounces.

Finally, Isaac closes out the fixed portion of the clip with a burly variation on his wrist magic drop straight into a thumb stall. Gnarly! Stick around after the credits for some bonus bearing booty from the boys, and don’t forget to comment below about your favorite tricks. Oh, and you can download the song here if you’d like. Until next week, Fixed Axle Aficinados!

sure! pocketwatch was definitely one of the more popular fixed axle tricks of WYYC, i’m sure you’ll hear more about it in a column soon, but just to give a short summary:
1. throw the yo-yo lightly.
2. tug it back, but catch it in your non-throwhand
3. give the yo-yo a good firm tug. don’t kill your middle finger or nothin’, but you want the string to wind around the axle extra tight, so it’s effectively snagged.
4. swing it around like a fancy pocketwatch! you can usually dislodge the snag with an extra-fast swing (be careful of your face.)